Page 91 of Road Trip with a Vampire

Before I could reply to that, the man in question burst unannounced into the apartment like a next-door neighbor in a ’90s sitcom. He held a scrap of paper in his hand and turned to Reggie. “This was taped to your front door. It’s addressed to me.”

The panic-stricken look on his face had Reggie and me on our feet in an instant.

“Let me see it,” I said.

“I suspect it’s from our mysterious correspondent,” Peter said darkly, handing it over.

Reggie’s eyes went very wide. “Who knows you’re here?”

“No one,” I said. “At least, no one I’m aware of.” I looked at the note in my hands. It was the same handwriting, style, and red ink as the note Peter got at the hotel the other night and the notes he received in California.

Peter!

My word. Yourchoices! We cannot help but laugh.

You really are the master.

See you soon.

Signed,

You Know Who

I read the short note three times, thinking repetition might put the cryptic words into some sort of comprehensible order. It didn’t work.

“What does the note mean?” Reggie asked, mystified.

Peter’s expression darkened. “Other than the fact that someone is clearly tailing us, I don’t know. Though Ifeellike I should.” He took the note back from me, then angrily stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. “It’s like those visual puzzles where you can only see the solution if you let your eyes go out of focus in just the right way. The answer isright therebut completely out of reach.”

Reggie frowned. “When someone gets a series of mysterious notes in red ink, it rarely ends well.” He gave me a meaningful look. “Do you think these notes could have anything to do with…uh, that situation with The Collective I had to deal with last spring?”

My eyes widened. “Oh gods, I hadn’t even considered them.” Those lineage-obsessed losers had been unhealthily obsessed with bringing Reggie to justice ever since I’d secretly started a fire at one of their parties ages ago. He had been the chief suspect but had never ratted me out as having been the real arsonist. That’s what true friendship looks like.

At one point about six months ago, I’d actually thought one of those yahoos had finally found me in California. It turned out to be a false alarm in the form of one particularly stoned surfer.

“No idea if it’s them, of course,” Reggie continued. “But The Collectivelovessending bombastic notes in red ink. The handwriting is different, but the note otherwise looks like the ones they sent me.” He frowned. “We never heard from them again after Amelia threatened to report them to the IRS for tax evasion, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone.”

My head was spinning. As far as I knew, The Collective had never managed to get their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that ’twas I who’d set their house ablaze. But how much of a coincidence would it have to be for someone I was traveling with to get notes from this shadowy group, given my history?

“Let me ask you this, Petey,” Reggie said. “Did you get any notes before meeting up with Grizzy—Zelda, sorry—in California?”

Peter glared at him. Whether it was because Reggie had called himPeteyor because he’d just asked him to recall something despite knowing he had amnesia, I wasn’t sure. “I can’t remember,” he muttered.

“Hmm.” Reggie sat down heavily at the kitchen table, a thoughtful expression on his face. “What did the other notes say?”

“The ones I got in California told me to come to Indiana,” Peter said. “Couldn’t make sense of the one at that hotel.”

“Neither could I,” I said. Though, now that I thought about it…

Hadn’t the last note complimented Peter on his choice of travel companion? Meaning me?

Another awful thought occurred to me. What if Peter had done something in the past to land him on The Collective’s bad side? They were so petty and self-important they likely had an enemy list a mile long. If Reggie was right—if these notes were from The Collective—and if Peter couldn’t remember what he might have done to piss them off, he could be walking into a trap.

The Collective might be idiots, but they could be irritatingly lethal idiots when given the opportunity.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to take several deep breaths. I was letting my imagination get the better of me. What were the odds that The Collective, who had never managed tofind me before, were the ones sending these? More to the point: If ithadbeen The Collective tailing us all this time and they had it out for one or both of us, why wouldn’t they have just nabbed us at some point on this trip rather than mess around with notes?

And yet…